Healthful Insights to Serve You Well

Popcorn is tasty Popcorn Lung is not

With e-cigarettes and vaporizers, folks can get a nicotine fix without having to light up. Their popularity has skyrocketed and now in any town across America you will find one if not several e-cigarette/vape shops.

While avoiding the 51 known carcinogens out of the 4000 chemicals in a cigarette is a desirable idea, the truth is that the vaporizing pen may be unknowingly delivering a much more deadly set of chemicals.

For the sake of this writing we will focus on a chemical called diacetyl, and back in 2000, several employees at a microwave popcorn plant in Missouri ended up with bronchiolitis obliterans that is a serious and irreversible condition that scars the tiny air sacks in the lungs. It is for this and other reasons it is wise to avoid microwave butter popcorn also.

It is a flavoring used to give popcorn its buttery taste and the employees had inhaled it by working around it that lead to their illness. A seven million dollar lawsuit was awarded to an individual who consumed butter microwave popcorn for ten years twice a day that came down with the disease.

A 2015 study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives proved that harmful chemicals associated with popcorn lung are present in many types of flavored e-cigarettes. 39 of the 51 flavored e-cigarettes tested had diacetyl in them, and this hints at the possible dangerous level of exposure via e-cigarettes to chemicals that may cause severe lung damage.

The symptoms of popcorn lung are a cough and shortness of breath. Some people with the condition also have fevers, night sweats, and weight loss. The disease is not reversible.

With decades of cigarette smoking behind me, I get the appeal and should you ever desire to break the nicotine addiction (that is all smoking, vaping, chewing is) I can recommend a single easy to read book. The easy way to stop smoking by Allen Carr.

Everyone has a right to know of all the potential dangers from e-cigarettes, and it is your right to use them as you desire. Now you know the truth, Be Well!